A dramatic shift in customer demands and employee expectations is driving an exciting landscape of innovation.

This year alone, I have witnessed:

A motorcycle company and beverage bottler accelerating dominance by getting faster answers with a digital core of enterprise-wide intelligence

A food provider and resin maker pushing the envelope on what is possible for the customer experience with connected, seemingly omniscient intelligence

A bank helping 2.5 million under-served people and small businesses to prosper by bringing financial services to their fingertips

These real-life successes show what we can expect in 2020 and beyond. No matter the industry, every business has the power to redefine the economy and position itself in the global marketplace, despite the current backdrop of economic change and uncertainty. At the centre of such promising potential is the enabling power of the latest technology.

Delivering outcomes that matter

This new reality is motivating every expert from the SAP Digital Business Services organisation. Whether customers work with SAP directly or through a partner, we stand with them at the intersection of technology and creativity, transforming business operations.

For companies such as Italika (Mexico’s leading motorcycle brand), digital innovation is creating an engine for considerable market growth. Now representing a market share of 70 per cent, Italika brought together data from its logistics, manufacturing, back-office finance, and inventory control operations into a single platform: SAP S/4HANA. This digital core of business intelligence allows every employee, retailer, and customer to quickly access answers to questions, fostering a brand culture of transparency, accountability, reliability, and trust.

Coca-Cola FEMSA, the world’s largest franchise bottler of Coca-Cola trademark beverages, is addressing the needs of more than two million points of sales in Latin America by unifying its procurement function. It consolidated localised purchasing capabilities and developed strategic and streamlined negotiating and buying processes. The company’s procurement team can now give managers, buyers, and internal customers the right information to perform their responsibilities efficiently and effectively.

Grupo Bafar is going even further by capturing, processing, and sharing Internet of Things (IoT) data. As one of Mexico’s leading providers of nutritious meals and snacks, the company expanded its 35-year commitment to innovation, quality, and convenience with a clear road map to becoming an intelligent enterprise. The one-on-one enablement sessions and hands-on exercises offered through SAP Enterprise Support quickly identified the technology needed to set the foundation for the company’s end-to-end asset monitoring and business model.

Indelpro is also preserving the integrity of its customer experience with the assistance of SAP Enterprise Support, but this time it is fueled by the cloud. Mexico’s only polypropylene resins producer is optimising its investment in SAP C/4HANA, the next-generation customer relationship management (CRM) solution, by leveraging extension capabilities in a cloud platform. With the support of a series of empowerment sessions, technical enablement workshops, and hands-on demos from SAP, the company is on the road to supporting client demand better while consistently improving its customer experience.

While all of these stories are compelling examples of SAP customers’ successes, there is one story that fully showcases the ripple effect of our work: Compartamos Banco. The bank serves millions of people living throughout Latin America, often vulnerable to theft, cash shortages, and limited access to credit and investments. With the support of mobile solutions and scalable foundational technology, Compartamos customers can do banking from anywhere with their smartphones. This level of convenience and access is helping to eradicate financial exclusion as its customer base grows, and to offer products that meet customers’ needs.